Nice game published on 1998 and now available for free here: https://www.abandonware-france.org/ltf_abandon/ltf_jeu.php?id=2015
I tried to make a full RIP out of it, and that was not too difficult, but with some surprises. Here is what I did:
1) mounted the CD image
2) extracted the audio tracks using bchunk (but any other method should do good)
3) I decided not to try the game installer and simply copied the content of the CD V2000 folder to a game folder on the HD.
4) hooked the V2000.EXE file with DxWnd default options (no CD audio yet)
At this time, the game surprisingly worked fine. Since in the CD there is a LASERLOK folder I supposedthat there should be some sort of copy protection, but i found none. But there was no CD audio. So I tried to add the CD audio files (in the Music folder) and the emulation flag and the game terminated when starting the mission.
My guess was right: with no CD audio the game is unprotected, but if you add CD audio the game checks for the exact length, so you need to add the mcihack.txt file. This way the game works and has CD audio tracks.
If anyone is interested, he can follow my steps. In attach my profile and the mcihack.txt file to be dropped in the Music folder.
I tried it with your files and I have some problems here in Win7.
The game hangs for quite some time after launch but that wouldn't be a big problem.
1) The intro is terribly slow when playing wav and then the game crashes to the desktop without an error message
2) My wav's files 8, 9, 10, 11, are weird.
For 8,9 the music ends halfway through the track, 10 and 11 don't play at all.
Update:
3) If I skip the intro the game doesn't crash, but it's terribly slow whether in sw mode or d3d
DxWnd was unable to kill the game via hotkey....
Update:
The extreme slowness of the game was caused by the "Set16BPP RGB565 encoding" flag. This is the third game that needed this flag turned off otherwise it was terribly slow. As for the game itself, it is a bit unstable and sometimes crashes right at the intro video.
Paradoxically, Handle Exceptions causes the game to crash immediately after launch when entering the menu.
Thank you, both problems are weird and deserve some investigation.
About the RGB565 problem I would expect bad colors, not the slowness. Please, forgive my distraction, but could you name the other two games that are affected by this problem?
About the handle exceptions I noted that too in some cases and probably my routine disables some more effective recovery performed by the executable code. It may be not easy to tell when to intercept the exception or not to. Again, to be investigated.
p.s. did you get my P.M. ? The game seemed nice and could be translated from Czech to English, maybe ...
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So if there is a third game that had speed issues here with this flag, unfortunately I couldn't find it in the posts.
p.s. did you get my P.M.
Honestly, I haven't been in email for a long time, I'll check. I understand, I only know the first game for DOS. I'll see if I can get it.
Update: I didn't notice that the game is available for download directly on the website you sent :-)
The game is free, I'll write about the translation later.
P.S.
Are your waw's that I mentioned okay?
Last edit: huh 2025-08-24
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I got some time to repeat the tests on the 3 games mentioned above. Here are quick answers: EA Superbike 2001 doesn't work on my computer, (it never did) so I can't tell. I'll try again to make it working ... Destruction Derby S3D effectively needs no RGB565 (that is, a RGB555 mode) but the change affects primarily the rendering quality Excessive Speed works on my computer apparently the same with or without RGB565. The problem could perhaps depend on the formats supported by the video card.
too late, wife is calling, goodnight!
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EA Superbike 2001 works on the same profile as Superbike 2000. The problem I faced recently was it would crash without Run as admin. A Windows reinstallation fixed the issue and runs fine without Run as admin. I never had any slowness issue with RGB565.
I haven't tried Excessive Speed in a long time. This game had CD audio issues. The notebook I own doesn't have too much storage, so when you are down to fix the audio again, I will get the game back and possibly rechek the colour issue on this new Hardware.
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@gho
Maybe there is a problem with Win7 for the two mentioned games. The difference after disabling this flag is evident. @BEEN_Nath_58 once wrote that Win7 does not support RGB555.
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I can't recall much, but not supporting is probably a matter of the driver, or more likely some DxWnd interrogation. I think the latter was a more probable case
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Finally I found something about SBK2001: setting WinXP compatibility fixes the game!
I compared the logs of the game with and without compatibility, but unfortunately there seems to be no clue about the reason of the crash.
Trying other compatibility settings, incredibly I found that the game works with ANY compatibility, from WinXP to Win7, Win8 and even the most recent Vista SP2.
@BEEN_Nath_58: Have you some idea about how to find the minimum common denominator of all these compatibility settings and find a short list of possible responsible shims?
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It must be something related to heap: I tried with the DxWnd heap flags but none of them singularly was fixing the problem. But setting all of them started the game, at least up to the quick game start, then the game crashed again. I wonder what's inside the FaultTolerantHeap shim that is stronger than our Win9X emulation! Maybe the logs could help ....
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FTH breaks the game for me instead. After launching a race the game crashes.
EmulateHeap is alone working, at least it worked for users in Vogons. If it alone doesn't work, it maybe some other configuration in your notebook that is causing issues.
(On that note my University notebook crashes a lot of games, eg. Rainbow Six 1998 when run without Run as admin and even DxWnd Handle Exceptions can't help)
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Nice game published on 1998 and now available for free here: https://www.abandonware-france.org/ltf_abandon/ltf_jeu.php?id=2015
I tried to make a full RIP out of it, and that was not too difficult, but with some surprises. Here is what I did:
1) mounted the CD image
2) extracted the audio tracks using bchunk (but any other method should do good)
3) I decided not to try the game installer and simply copied the content of the CD V2000 folder to a game folder on the HD.
4) hooked the V2000.EXE file with DxWnd default options (no CD audio yet)
At this time, the game surprisingly worked fine. Since in the CD there is a LASERLOK folder I supposedthat there should be some sort of copy protection, but i found none. But there was no CD audio. So I tried to add the CD audio files (in the Music folder) and the emulation flag and the game terminated when starting the mission.
My guess was right: with no CD audio the game is unprotected, but if you add CD audio the game checks for the exact length, so you need to add the mcihack.txt file. This way the game works and has CD audio tracks.
If anyone is interested, he can follow my steps. In attach my profile and the mcihack.txt file to be dropped in the Music folder.
Last edit: gho 2025-08-22
I tried it with your files and I have some problems here in Win7.
The game hangs for quite some time after launch but that wouldn't be a big problem.
1) The intro is terribly slow when playing wav and then the game crashes to the desktop without an error message
2) My wav's files 8, 9, 10, 11, are weird.
For 8,9 the music ends halfway through the track, 10 and 11 don't play at all.
Update:
3) If I skip the intro the game doesn't crash, but it's terribly slow whether in sw mode or d3d
DxWnd was unable to kill the game via hotkey....
Last edit: huh 2025-08-24
Update:
The extreme slowness of the game was caused by the "Set16BPP RGB565 encoding" flag. This is the third game that needed this flag turned off otherwise it was terribly slow. As for the game itself, it is a bit unstable and sometimes crashes right at the intro video.
Paradoxically, Handle Exceptions causes the game to crash immediately after launch when entering the menu.
Last edit: huh 2025-08-24
Thank you, both problems are weird and deserve some investigation.
About the RGB565 problem I would expect bad colors, not the slowness. Please, forgive my distraction, but could you name the other two games that are affected by this problem?
About the handle exceptions I noted that too in some cases and probably my routine disables some more effective recovery performed by the executable code. It may be not easy to tell when to intercept the exception or not to. Again, to be investigated.
p.s. did you get my P.M. ? The game seemed nice and could be translated from Czech to English, maybe ...
EA Superbike 2001
https://sourceforge.net/p/dxwnd/discussion/general/thread/83109ba2ef/?page=1&limit=25#afa4
Destruction Derby S3D
-it was probably not speed related here.
https://sourceforge.net/p/dxwnd/discussion/general/thread/336c9b19f2/?limit=25#a14f
https://sourceforge.net/p/dxwnd/discussion/general/thread/336c9b19f2/?page=1&limit=25#677
Excessive Speed (1999 2D diagonal down combat racing)
Here was the problem with the color palette.
https://sourceforge.net/p/dxwnd/discussion/general/thread/e4c52f553e/?limit=25#456e
So if there is a third game that had speed issues here with this flag, unfortunately I couldn't find it in the posts.
Honestly, I haven't been in email for a long time, I'll check. I understand, I only know the first game for DOS. I'll see if I can get it.
Update: I didn't notice that the game is available for download directly on the website you sent :-)
The game is free, I'll write about the translation later.
P.S.
Are your waw's that I mentioned okay?
Last edit: huh 2025-08-24
I got some time to repeat the tests on the 3 games mentioned above. Here are quick answers:
EA Superbike 2001 doesn't work on my computer, (it never did) so I can't tell. I'll try again to make it working ...
Destruction Derby S3D effectively needs no RGB565 (that is, a RGB555 mode) but the change affects primarily the rendering quality
Excessive Speed works on my computer apparently the same with or without RGB565. The problem could perhaps depend on the formats supported by the video card.
too late, wife is calling, goodnight!
EA Superbike 2001 works on the same profile as Superbike 2000. The problem I faced recently was it would crash without Run as admin. A Windows reinstallation fixed the issue and runs fine without Run as admin. I never had any slowness issue with RGB565.
I haven't tried Excessive Speed in a long time. This game had CD audio issues. The notebook I own doesn't have too much storage, so when you are down to fix the audio again, I will get the game back and possibly rechek the colour issue on this new Hardware.
@gho
Maybe there is a problem with Win7 for the two mentioned games. The difference after disabling this flag is evident. @BEEN_Nath_58 once wrote that Win7 does not support RGB555.
I can't recall much, but not supporting is probably a matter of the driver, or more likely some DxWnd interrogation. I think the latter was a more probable case
You wrote it here
https://sourceforge.net/p/dxwnd/discussion/general/thread/e4c52f553e/?page=1&limit=25#bb25/417b
However, I think it will be a problem either in the drivers, Directx or directly in the graphics card.
Okay I remember vividly. Windows 7 (or the driver or DirectX) would probably force 16bit colours instead of the requested 15bits.
Kind of how Windows tries to turn 16->32 bits on Windows 8+ without mitigation.
DxWnd is helping in this case. Your case with SBK2001 is likely different
Finally I found something about SBK2001: setting WinXP compatibility fixes the game!
I compared the logs of the game with and without compatibility, but unfortunately there seems to be no clue about the reason of the crash.
Trying other compatibility settings, incredibly I found that the game works with ANY compatibility, from WinXP to Win7, Win8 and even the most recent Vista SP2.
@BEEN_Nath_58: Have you some idea about how to find the minimum common denominator of all these compatibility settings and find a short list of possible responsible shims?
Wasn't this quite simple? Use ACT tool, apply WinXP compatibility and just edit the list of shims it enables. Very likely it's FaultTolerantHeap
It must be something related to heap: I tried with the DxWnd heap flags but none of them singularly was fixing the problem. But setting all of them started the game, at least up to the quick game start, then the game crashed again. I wonder what's inside the FaultTolerantHeap shim that is stronger than our Win9X emulation! Maybe the logs could help ....
FTH breaks the game for me instead. After launching a race the game crashes.
EmulateHeap is alone working, at least it worked for users in Vogons. If it alone doesn't work, it maybe some other configuration in your notebook that is causing issues.
(On that note my University notebook crashes a lot of games, eg. Rainbow Six 1998 when run without Run as admin and even DxWnd Handle Exceptions can't help)